Why did Sri Lanka lose the T20 finals?

Bro. Nimal Gurusinghe

It is indeed a million dollar question. It is always good to analyze where our team went wrong. My intention is not to criticize our players.

It is very easy to find fault with our national cricketers. But my intention is not that. As a lover of cricket I like to give my opinion on what happened on that big day.

Before I give my comments I would like to congratulate Kumar Sangakkara and his team mates for their great achievement. Before the final they won all their matches. After all we are the runners up. All Sri Lankans should be happy and proud with our national cricketers.

We all wished them well and they all gave their best. That was the very reasons we were able to reach the finals. Many other great cricket nations could not come to the finals.

As we know mighty Australia, New Zealand, England and India could not reach even the semi finals. When we compare ourselves with them our cricketers have shown their class.

\They lost only one match. Unfortunately it happened to be the finals. All Sri Lankan cricket fans should be proud of our national cricket heroes who became runners up in this prestigious T20 cricket Tournament.

Now let us analyze really what happened at the final. First of all I think that was one of the off days to our cricket team.

The game of cricket is like that and you have ups and downs.

But on the other hand the Pakistan team came with a concrete plan to deliver on this great day.

They had studied well all our players and had a trap for most of our batsmen. From the very first over itself it was obvious the way they got our star batsman T. M. Dilshan out.

Then I do not understand why Mubarak was sent in the No 3 position.

Usually he comes late in order and gets about 15 to 20 runs. By sending him early we sacrificed his wicket and also ran short of some valuable runs.

If the skipper had come at No. 3 he could have scored another 10 to 15 runs extra.

Then sending Isuru Udana ahead of Angelo Matthews is a mystery. If Angelo Matthews had come a little earlier he could have contributed another about 15 runs to our total. That would have made a big difference in the ultimate result of the game.

When Pakistan was batting at the 18th over the required run rate was over 8 runs per over. Upto that point they were struggling and boundaries and sixes were not coming.

Then our skipper brought inexperienced Isuru Udana to bowl the 18th over.

Very experienced Afridi made hay in that over. He hit fourteen runs in that over and made things easy for his team to carry all before them.

If the above mentioned mistakes were not made we could have won the match. But when we play cricket we take risks, sometimes it works and at times it does not work. That was not our day. I conclude this article with the following statement.

Last year's runners up became the champions of T20 world cup Tournament in 2009. Let us hope this year runners up will be the kings of 2010 T20 and win the cup.

Once again hats off to our National cricketers who brought honour to our country who played excellent cricket during the whole tournament.

Also my hearty congratulations to T. M. Dilshan who was the man of the tournament.

May our team go from strength to strength.